Elusive fusion reactors to be commercialised by 2025-2030... Or so they say

D3K said:
Sure I get it. But that's how the term "Even if" functions in our language. Replace it with "Despite" and it's the same message : "Despite better battery tech, fusion development will happen". Surely you see how you are relating the advancement of battery tech to the development of fusion in both those sentences. They're not competing, but I acknowledge you didn't mean it that way.
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Please don't quote me on how our language works, i am well aware. You drew an idea from something that wasn't there.

To qualify, I am a massive proponent of battery storage AND fusion (and solar, wind, tidal, geothermal and fission.

Angilion said:
I have no idea what you're talking about.

You wrote this:



I replied asking why you thought that was a downside:



You replied that it would be a factor at a personal scale, in the context of developing fusion-powered engines for small vehicles.



Which doesn't answer the question of why it's a downside, only restates a context you'd already stated (engines in small vehicles). So I tried again, asking why you thought it was a downside and explaining why I think it isn't:



You replied by stating I'd done something I hadn't done and pretending you'd asked a question:



I answered your "question" and repeated my own, which you hadn't answered:



You replied with another statement and question, still not answering my question:



I gave a genuine answer. If you didn't intend "drawback" to mean "disadvantage, inconvenience, hindrance", what did you intend it to mean? What other meaning does "drawback" have that I couldn't find online (other than the type of taxation I already mentioned)? The word you originally used was "downside", which also has a clear meaning.

You replied with once again stating I'd done something I hadn't done, then said I was being facetious. Which is also something I haven't done. And you haven't answered the question.


You also misunderstood d_brennan:

D.P. wrote this:



d_brennan replied directly to that text, quoting specifically that text and only that text so it was very obvious what text they were replying to:



You are now arguing that when d_brennan wrote that they were inferring something that they clearly weren't inferring:



You continued to tell d_brennan that was what they meant, even though it clearly wasn't and they told you it wasn't.
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Well said. I wrote a whole rant last night but decided not to reply :p
 
Angilion said:
I have no idea what you're talking about.

You wrote this:



I replied asking why you thought that was a downside:



You replied that it would be a factor at a personal scale, in the context of developing fusion-powered engines for small vehicles.



Which doesn't answer the question of why it's a downside, only restates a context you'd already stated (engines in small vehicles). So I tried again, asking why you thought it was a downside and explaining why I think it isn't:



You replied by stating I'd done something I hadn't done and pretending you'd asked a question:



I answered your "question" and repeated my own, which you hadn't answered:



You replied with another statement and question, still not answering my question:



I gave a genuine answer. If you didn't intend "drawback" to mean "disadvantage, inconvenience, hindrance", what did you intend it to mean? What other meaning does "drawback" have that I couldn't find online (other than the type of taxation I already mentioned)? The word you originally used was "downside", which also has a clear meaning.

You replied with once again stating I'd done something I hadn't done, then said I was being facetious. Which is also something I haven't done. And you haven't answered the question.


You also misunderstood d_brennan:

D.P. wrote this:



d_brennan replied directly to that text, quoting specifically that text and only that text so it was very obvious what text they were replying to:



You are now arguing that when d_brennan wrote that they were inferring something that they clearly weren't inferring:



You continued to tell d_brennan that was what they meant, even though it clearly wasn't and they told you it wasn't.
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Congrats, you've successfully gotten the root of this particular part of the discussion.
Just to make sure we're aligned, let's make sure you also understand that cheap grid scale storage has nothing to do with energy generation.

So why, when you've proven to read all context, do you continue to cut context from my replies?

The singular word you choose to focus on, "downside", was used as a continuation of the idea that battery storage might affect fusion research, which it doesn't in the grand scheme of this topic.
In an attempt to explore what negatives could come from the advancement of better battery tech, I was making the point that: the better the battery tech, the less need for portable generation.
d_brennen said:
Please don't quote me on how our language works, i am well aware. You drew an idea from something that wasn't there.

To qualify, I am a massive proponent of battery storage AND fusion (and solar, wind, tidal, geothermal and fission.



Well said. I wrote a whole rant last night but decided not to reply :p
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Grow up or stop posting.
 
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physichull said:
This problem won't be solved. As I've said before, physics doesn't change over time. You have to build the reactor out of something. You could use materials that have low neutron absorption cross sections, but ultimately you would need steels and shielding around the machine and blanket.

You could use lead (high density and Z number) for the gammas but this would be almost invisible to neutrons, so you would also need something with a high hydrogen content.

Unavoidably, both add size and mass, therefore making fusion reactors on personal transport completely unfeasible - irrespective of how much you "researched" the technology.
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I was talking about what's effectively soft sci-fi (fusion-powered engines in cars) that was incorporating an assumption that in the future some people have invented a way of working around one obstacle that currently seems insurmountable. In that context, adding the assumption that they did the same for another such obstacle makes no difference. Hence why I wrote "While (somehow) developing [something that gets around the first obstacle] scientists and engineers also (somehow) solved [the second obstacle]." Somehow somehow something. The dilithium crystals use the neutrons to power the Heisenberg compensator or whatever.

Physics doesn't change over time, but human understanding of it does and human technology does. I wouldn't absolutely rule out the possibility of developments in knowledge and technology leading to someone (or more likely a team of people) to develop a workaround of some sort to some extent. There have already been improvements to shielding. There will probably be some more. There might be some significant improvements in the future that haven't yet been thought of or which require materials that don't currently exist or both. Although I would expect it to always be much too big and heavy to fit into a car and much too unsafe to do so even if it could be. As AndyT put it, "Not great in a motorway pileup." It doesn't just have to work, it has to remain safe in whatever bad circumstances might happen.
 
D3K said:
Congrats, you've successfully gotten the root of this particular part of the discussion.
Just to make sure we're aligned, let's make sure you also understand that cheap grid scale storage has nothing to do with energy generation.
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Let's make sure you also understand that chocolate spongecake has nothing to do with growing sunflowers.

Anyone fancy adding some more examples being condescending and irrelevant?

So why, when you've proven to read all context, do you continue to cut context from my replies?
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You saw the size of my post. I suppose I could have quoted the entirety of 11 posts, but that would have been silly. And it wouldn't have stopped you saying I'd cut context since there are (currently) 85 posts in this thread alone. You've made stuff up from far less than that.

The singular word you choose to focus on, "downside", was used as a continuation of the idea that battery storage might affect fusion research
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As anyone who cares to read the dozen or more posts could see, neither of those statements is entirely accurate.

That'll do for today. Off the top of my head I can thinking of several dozen things that are more informative and/or entertaining than replying to your posts.
 
Angilion said:
Let's make sure you also understand that chocolate spongecake has nothing to do with growing sunflowers.

Anyone fancy adding some more examples being condescending and irrelevant?



You saw the size of my post. I suppose I could have quoted the entirety of 11 posts, but that would have been silly. And it wouldn't have stopped you saying I'd cut context since there are (currently) 85 posts in this thread alone. You've made stuff up from far less than that.



As anyone who cares to read the dozen or more posts could see, neither of those statements is entirely accurate.

That'll do for today. Off the top of my head I can thinking of several dozen things that are more informative and/or entertaining than replying to your posts.
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Now you're saying I am making things up?! I do not know what your problem is with comprehension but let's just focus on my post again:
D3K said:
You're still gonna need a means to put power in the batteries, so the two techs are not mutually exclusive. The only downside to better battery tech is it makes the idea of fusion powered vehicles even less relevant. No need to research scaling down the tech to fit in your moped if it's already being powered from a fusion powered grid.
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I've stated why it's a downside in the same post. There is no need for further explanation, the sentence that comes after is an example. Mopeds using batteries powered from a fusion grid makes small-scale fusion research less necessary.
And again, this is continuing the idea that battery tech may somehow impede fusion research. If there is a downside to be had, I'm hypothesising that it will be at the personal/mobile level because battery tech would make developing small scale fusion less necessary.
Angilion said:
But why would that matter? Even assuming that it would ever be possible to make a fully functional high efficiency fusion engine small enough to fit in a moped, what advantages would it have over an equally hypothetical future battery far superior to any battery we have today? In other words, how would it be a factor at the personal scale? Both would be electrically powered. The difference would be in how the electricity was stored on the moped.
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Here, you are asking me to argue benefits to using fusion on a moped, which is asking me to argue against my point. The angle of your question is that there is no need for fusion on a moped. Exactly the same as mine.

What have I made up?
 
We should run a sweep stake to which will come first. Fusion or the Sabre Rocket ship which I swear has been nearly completed for about 20years.
 
Trust the internet to reduce discussion of a thrilling, radical technology and international engineering challenge to bickering. I don't normally get involved, but give it a rest FFS :p
 
mrk said:
The Germans have turned on their stellarator.

Once again, Germany ahead of the curve! :cool:
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That was almost 5 years ago. But it was only 9 years behind schedule and only costing double the initially expected price, which is a bit ahead of the curve.

The tests on the Wendelstein 7-x since then have been promising, but they're still also a long way from a fusion power station. It's relatively cheap (only a billion for a small test facility!) and the later experiments are good evidence that the design might well be able to sustain fusion more easily than a tokamak (which was one of the purposes of the stellarator design). It's offline for more upgrades at the moment, due back on in late 2021.

It's a good thing that several different designs for a fusion reactor are being tested. Stuff can be learned from all of them that can make all of them better.
 
Oops, looks like I didn't notice the posted date since youtube popped it up on the front of the timeline so automatically assumed it was a recent event!
 
physichull said:
This problem won't be solved. As I've said before, physics doesn't change over time. You have to build the reactor out of something. You could use materials that have low neutron absorption cross sections, but ultimately you would need steels and shielding around the machine and blanket.

You could use lead (high density and Z number) for the gammas but this would be almost invisible to neutrons, so you would also need something with a high hydrogen content.

Unavoidably, both add size and mass, therefore making fusion reactors on personal transport completely unfeasible - irrespective of how much you "researched" the technology.
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Jesus christ or you just use normal hydrogen. And have no neutrons in the plasma at all.


Don't other think things so much.
 
Malevolence said:
I can't be the only one that gets worried when China is involved in meddling with dangerous ****, can I?
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Tbh there's not a massive amount of danger the thermal mass of the plasma vs the reactor/reactor chamber along with the fact its fed with fuel rather than having all ita fuel inside all the time like fission reactor means there's not too much itcan do
 
Tefal said:
Tbh there's not a massive amount of danger the thermal mass of the plasma vs the reactor/reactor chamber along with the fact its fed with fuel rather than having all ita fuel inside all the time like fission reactor means there's not too much itcan do
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Yeah, I know how a fusion reactor works. But this is China, those ***** could damage half the planet with a cotton wool factory.
 
Malevolence said:
Yeah, I know how a fusion reactor works. But this is China, those ***** could damage half the planet with a cotton wool factory.
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Well yeah have you seen the amount of toxic chemicals needed to make cotton wool?

I wouldn't be surprised if pollution from such a factory inching has spread that far lol
 
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